1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of electronic commerce. In particular, the invention relates to technologies for managing state in telephone applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following describes various techniques used in telephone systems to provide enhanced user features. First, telephone identifying information will be discussed. Many telephone systems that support enhanced user features use telephone identifying information as a basic component.
1. Telephone Identifying Information
The advent of automatic number identification (ANI) and calling number identification (CNID, CLID, or CID) within the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) has supported the creation of a number of services that use these pieces of telephone identifying information. Comparable systems may be used in other numbering plans and countries to support similar services.
For example, when consumers receive credit cards in the mail, they have to call from their home telephone numbers to activate the cards. This is a typical use of ANI. In this instance, the credit card company matches the ANI information provided when the consumer calls to a previously provided telephone number. If the ANI matches the credit card company's records, the credit card company activates the card.
2. Cookies
Cookies are the colloquial term for the “HTTP State Management Mechanism” that as more fully defined in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request For Comment (RFC) 2109.
In a similar vein, a modified standard is being developed for proxy state management. See “HTTP Proxy State Management Mechanism” draft proposal to the IETF.
3. Storing State In Telephony Applications
Previous techniques have identified and personalized a user's phone experience through ANI, or other phone-specific device identification information, e.g. telephone identifying information. Alternatively, or in some cases additionally, an explicit user identifier and/or password had to be provided to the application. Then, the individual applications could maintain appropriate state information keyed to that ANI, or user identifier. The state information itself was stored in an application specific, e.g. proprietary, format.
Previous techniques do not preserve privacy of user information if multiple phone applications from different legal entities are provided. Previous techniques do not provide a uniform programming interface for developers of phone applications to store state information. Previous techniques do not provide transparent and persistent access to stored state information. Previous techniques do not allow existing web-based applications to be ported to phone applications that share a common back end and state management mechanism.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method and apparatus for providing state management for telephone applications that can operate in environments with applications provided by multiple legal entities and support multiple users from a single telephone and multiple telephones for a given user, provide a transparent and persistent state management mechanism, and provide easy porting of web based applications to telephone applications.